Gathering Stones

Monday of Holy Week


Then the chief priests and Pharisees called a meeting. ‘Here is this man working all these signs’ they said ‘and what action are we taking? If we let him go on in this way everybody will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy the Holy Place and our nation.’ One of them, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, said, ‘You do not seem to have grasped the situation at all; you fail to see that it is better for one man to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed.’ He did not speak in his own person, it was as high priest that he made this prophecy that Jesus was to die for the nation – and not for the nation only, but to gather together in unity the scattered children of God. From that day they were determined to kill him.

                                                                            John 11: 48-5

The crowd gathering stones from the desert floor of their souls.
How we grip our rocks to hurl at our Lord.
How many times?
How long?

How our daily acts can do this:
grasping at idols of a parched air
we become a great scattering,
a dark thread of dust blowing,
hearts of stone
He comes to gather:

to make whole in His mystical body;
to raise up to new life with Him;
to be the glimmer
of divinity
on the palm of our hand;
in the eyes of the other;

to see
His gift
a disturbance
always.